Problem #4

This is not the kind of problems you are used to. This is more like a "positional chess problem" than a tactics problem. Even though the position is one of attack and defense, it doesn't have anything to do with it. So I warn you: don't look for mates, or forks, or stuff like that.

The game was played in 1990, and is between Kamsky and Petursson. The game started with a King's Indian Defense.

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Kamsky - Petursson, 1990

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White to move

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To see the solution, just highlight the hidden text below.

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Solution:

1. h6 Bh8 2. f5!, and the Bishop is in a prison. White effectively played "up a piece" for the rest of the game, and Black eventually resigned in an opposite-color bishop ending. Black's Bishop never left its cage.
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Panov Formation

The Panov formation gets its name from Panov (duh), who played it for the first time in 1929 in a game against Mudrov, as White. As you maybe already know, Panov has a line in the Caro-Kann Defense named after him, the Panov-Botvinnik Attack, which goes 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. c4. The Panov formation is characterized by the pawn-chain formed by d4 and c5, and Black generally has his own pawns on e6 and d5.

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The game continued: 4. ...Nf6 5. Nc3 Nc6 6. Nf3 Bf5(?) 7. c5! (Diagram)

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It is GM Andrew Soltis in Pawn Structure Chess (which will be the subject of a future book review) who annotates 6. ...Bf5 with a "?". He writes that White would have thought twice about playing 7. c5 had Black played 6. ...Bg4!, since in the Panov formation, the d-pawn is a permanent weakness in a fixed center. We will see that attacking the d-pawn is one of the three main options Black has against that formation.

So, why did White play c5 ? Let's look at the pawn structure which defines the Panov formation:

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We see that White has excellent outposts on e5 and d6, which means for him "excellent use of the black squares in the middlegame and a trump in the ending" (Soltis). Indeed, according to Soltis the reason as to why Bf5 is not nearly as good as Bg4 is because it lacks control over the dark squares (notice that Bg4 would have removed the f3-knight's capacities of defending the dark squares). The main drawback -- besides the fixed backward d-pawn -- is that it is Black who has the potential now to make any pawn-move to contest the center, with ...b6 or ...e5.

Black has three main plans:

1. contest the center with ...e5;
2. contest the center with ...b6;
3. attack White's d-pawn with Bf6 and Ne5 (or simply play Ne4 and f5 and attack on the kingside).

White doesn't have to fear ...e5 all that much, because it comes with its own consequences: after dxe5, White has gotten rid of his backward d-pawn and has created an isolated d-pawn on Black's camp, thus having an outpost on d4. Whether White's c5-weakness is better or worse than Black's d5 isolated pawn depends on your style of play (and your opponent's) I guess.

As for ...b6, White has two main options: he can take it with cxb6 or let Black capture on c5, and in both cases White can control the c-file with heavy pieces; or he can support his c-pawn with b2-b4, and maintain a passed c-pawn. (But beware!, use your head before playing b2-b4: ...a5 could make it look kind of bad, because a3 doesn't always succeed in defending the b4-pawn, if your rook on a1 is not protected and would thus be captured after ...a5xb4 axb4. Make sure your a-pawn wouldn't be pinned.)

Note that the Panov formation doesn't have to come from a Caro-Kann Defense. Even Black can obtain a Panov formation. For example, in the Tarrasch Defense of the Queen's Gambit Declined: 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 e6 3. c4 c5 4. Nc3 Nc6 5. cxd5 exd5 6. g3 Nf6 7. Bg2 h6 8. O-O Be6 9. Be3 Ng4 10. Qd2 c5 (Diagram)

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YouTube Phenomenon

The YouTube phenomenon generally refers to the huge amount of videos being posted everyday by plenty of people about plenty of things. But of course, I don't mean it that way here...

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We know what a chess lecture is. For instance, ICC offers some on http://www.chess.fm/ (some don't require your being registered on the ICC). Simply defined, a video chess lecture is a video about chess (an annotated game, the discussion of a specific theme such as the endgame, etc.), in which a player explains or describes something. They most commonly have an educational aim.

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Have you guessed what I am going to talk about yet? Oh, yes, chess lectures on youtube... this time though, it doesn't go through any selection process like there is on ICC. On ICC, the lecturers are either IMs or GMs. It would be senseless to let any random user publish their own little video... Enter youtube. Very few are decently rated -- I saw one FM, one NM and one USCF class A player, but as for the rest, they are not what I could call "rated high enough to make a video chess lecture with an educational aim". Oh, but they do anyway, they do :)

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Some of them are just painful. I will mention a few of them, so that you can bleed with me.

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1) Slattster (http://www.youtube.com/user/slattster)

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There are videos from him in which he is rated in the 800s on FICS. So, I mean, whatever he says, it's to be taken with a grain of salt :) He has now a 1200-something USCF rating... muuuuuch better.

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One nice thing to look at is his videos in which he is commenting a game while playing it, i.e. you get to see what his thought-process looks like, for one; and for two, it means that it is all spontaneous, he didn't prepare his analysis whatsoever. Oh, priceless. Mates-in-2 being missed are awkwardly common, and so are pieces being hung (he sometimes notices it afterwards and says things like "let's see if he'll take it"... of course he'll take it!, you just hung a piece for no reason).

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Not to mention, many of his games are being played on Yahoo! Chess, in the beginners' room... I mean, who plays there?

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2) JRobi (http://www.youtube.com/user/jrobichess)

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Painful too, but in another way. He doesn't do any live games, and you can tell that his analysis are prepared (I won't say "well" prepared, but that's just because he and I don't have the same quality standards for a chess lecture). That gives a much better initial impression: it has been demonstrated (Petty & Wegener, 1998) that the message is more credible when the person speaks fast. And I'll have to admit it, the content is not too bad.

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The main problem is that it comes from a 1400 player. That's for the recent videos; in the oldest, I believe he is rated around 900-1000. He has a great variety of harmful videos: opening analysis, annotated games, endgame studies (for example, the Philidor Position), etc. One particularly irritating series of videos is his "Grandmaster Chess Tactics: Can you spot the line?". I just have one thing to tell him: it's not because it was found in a game between two grandmasters that it is a grandmaster level tactics (pins exist at all levels).

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The guy himself is somewhat irritating. The most frustrating thing is that he calls a game a "match", systematically. A match is a set of games between the same players -- it is not a synonym. His pronunciation of "bishop" and "position" gets on your nerves very quickly too, but what are you gonna do...

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Unfortunately, reinforcement comes from everywhere, since many, many, MANY beginners appreciate his videos. His videos attract an enormous amount of comments, most of them being extremely positive.

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It makes me cry at night.

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3) Chessplayerdan (http://www.youtube.com/user/Chessplayerdan)

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I thank Mother Earth everyday that he only made 4 videos. He is rated 1000 on FICS. Just like Slattster, he made a live game analysis too. Since he was on FICS he had to wait a lot before a game popped up, and it's nice to see him try to fill in the silence during that time.

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Note that if you try to listen to his videos (you shouldn't), you will have to turn your speakers really loud, because that guy doesn't seem to quite get how a microphone works. Oh well.

Update...

Long time no see!

Unfortunately, my internet connection went off on last Sunday, and it's only yesterday (Friday) that someone came here to fix it. Now I will be able to start posting again.

But still, messages won't be as frequent and as of good quality as they should be. For those who didn't read that message, I'll repeat the reason: I have a huge rush at university right now, and I won't have any real free time until May 15. You can still check out the aforementioned message, I gave in it some of the articles that will be soon published. (I can't wait for those about cognitive psychology!)

In the meantime, I'll keep posting problems and easy stuff like that... perhaps bigger articles too, but they might be slightly more rare until May 15 than they used to be :)

Problem #3

What's impressive about this problem, is that White saw an incredible combination, very hard to see. I guess he thought his position was so huge that there most likely was something forcing to do, but he definitely had to search deep to find it. And White is not even some kind of top GM -- just a "regular" grandmaster, rated 2518 (around 2510 at the time of the game).

The following position arose:

White played the incredibly strong 1. Nxc6!! Nxc6. Black didn't have much choices there: not only would he have lost a whole lot of material had he not captured, but he'd still have to deal with a very strong attack. Chessmaster XI gives White a minimum advantage of the equivalent of 6 pawns (+6.00), no matter how Black responds.

Can you see why Maksimenko sacrificed his Knight?

Maksimenko - Nielsen, 2003

White to move

To see the solution, just highlight the hidden text below.

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Solution:

2. Qxh7+! Kxh7 (2. ...Kf8 3. Qxg7+ 4. Ke7 Qxf7#) 3. Rh3+ Kg8 4. Ng6!, and Black will get mated with Rh8#.

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Caro-Kann Defense, Advance Variation: 3. ...g6 Line

The Caro-Kann Defense is known as one of the most solid systems against 1. e4, and a good one too against ruthless attackers. It also tends to offer a good endgame for Black, who generally ends up in a pawn structure similar to the one in the Scandinavian defense after 1. e4 d5. Note that the great Karpov is a big fan of the opening.

The Caro-Kann, as you most likely know, starts out with 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5. From there, White has three main choices, which are 3. Nf3, 3. exd5 and 3. e5. We will talk about the Advance Variation, 3. e5 :

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This is a reasonable line for both players. In the PGN from the PGNMentor.com website (see article PGNMentor.com PGN Library), a total of 12 042 games are to be found. Of them, 41,1% were won by White, whereas Black won 30,7% of them -- the 28,2% left were drawn.

In my own practice (I play the Caro-Kann), the Advance Variation is what I meet the most. But as White, when confronted to the Caro-Kann, I never play that. I find that it lacks flexibility, and that it's hard to keep that central bind for a long time anyway -- but that's another story. What interests us is the Black side here.

This can pose some problems for Black. If he doesn't react properly, he will get spatially crushed. The main idea in the Caro-Kann is to allow Black's light-squared Bishop on c8 to develop before closing the pawn structure with e6. Notice that initially, that's the main difference with the French Defense (1. e4 e6). So it makes sense that Black's main move is 3. ...Bf5 :

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That line has been played almost exclusively in response to the Advance Variation: 10 367 games out of 12 042 followed with 3. ...Bf5 (86% of the games!). And yet, it is not the line that statistically scores best! White won 41,0% of the games, whereas Black won 30,7% of them (28,3% were drawn). Unfortunately, for those who are afraid of moves like g4 (attacking that f5-Bishop) and h4, the 3. ...Bf5 is not an option.

So what are the other options? The second most popular response is 3. ...c5, which was played in 1 177 games out of 12 042 (9,77% of the games). At this point, the decision as to whether you prefer 3. ...Bf5 or 3. ...c5 is more of a stylistic decision, because results in practice are very similar for both lines. The latter scores perhaps slightly better: W 38,4% ; B 32,0% ; Draw 29,7%.

I find the third option for Black much more interesting though. It has been played a mere 214 times (1,78% of the games), but is the third most popular response nonetheless. Of course I am talking about 3. ...g6 :

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This line makes things much more exciting. The draw percentage drops by 4%, and is now of 24,3%. That 4% though, it is Black who takes it home: White won 40,7% of the games, and Black, 35,1% -- the highest percentage for Black's wins so far. Moreover, this gives kind of a problem to White. White isn't used to dealing with Black's light-squared Bishop, but now it is still waiting to get developed! For instance, 4. Nf3 Bg4, and e6 is coming. Note that Black isn't afraid of exchanging his Bishop for the Knight, because the position is closed and Knights are said to be slightly better than Bishops in closed position, and that anyway, given the e6-d5-c6 formation, Black could consider his light-square Bishop to be his bad Bishop.

Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, Black's other Bishop is going to get on g7, an incredible diagonal given White's pawn structure. Black can push his c-pawn to c5 whenever he wants, and White might just start to regret 3. ...e5 altogether. I have played many games with the 3. ...g6 line, and have had very good results.

Other third moves for Black include (in order of frequence): 3. ...Na6, 3. ...e6, 3. ...h5, and 3. ...Qb6. Although only played in 22 games out of 12 042, Qb6 led to 6 wins for White, but 8 wins for Black (and 8 draws). Maybe Qb6 is worth an investigation, who knows...

P.S.: 3. ...e6 leads to disaster;
P.P.S.: Karpov plays 3. ...Bf5, so it can't be all that bad :)

PGNMentor.com PGN Library

PGN Mentor is a program "for working with PGN files", but that's not what I am going to talk about here. I didn't try that program, and after a trial you need to order it.

But on their website, they have a huge database of PGN files of various Players, Openings and Events.

1. The PGN files with specific players' games are classified in alphabetical order (the first one being Michael Adams and the last one, Vadim Zvjaginsev).
2. The PGN files classified by openings are tremendously useful, and they seem to cover virtually all possible openings. They are classified based on the first moves, thus the 5 categories: Modern Queen Pawn (1. d4), Classical Queen Pawn (1. d4 d5), Modern King Pawn (a.k.a. semi-open games; 1. e4), Classical King Pawn (1. e4 e5), and Flank and Unorthodox.
3. The PGN files classified by the type of events offer three choices: Tournaments (from 1851 to 2007 (!)), Candidates and Interzonals (from 1948 to 2007), and World Championships (1886-2007).

What's incredibly impressive is the large amout of games in each PGN. For instance, Kasparov.pgn has 1968 games, while SicilianGrandPrix.pgn contains 6616 games!

So here's the address to the page with all the PGN files: http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html; and this is the address of the PGN Mentor website, where you can download their software: http://www.pgnmentor.com/.

Have fun!